Big news for anyone traumatized by the evil goo that was Hexxus in 1992: FernGully: The Last Rainforest is getting a live-action remake thanks to Amazon MGM Studios, according to a report from Deadline.
Writer, director, and actress Marielle Heller will pen the new script and direct. Heller previously directed and adapted the script for Nightbitch (where Amy Adams plays a woman turning into a dog), The Diary Of A Teenage Girl, and the Tom Hanks-leading Mr. Rogers biopic. She’s also starred in a number of shows, including The Queen’s Gambit and the 2021 spoof series MacGruber.
In case you missed it the first time around, FernGully: The Last Rainforest was a weird animated movie centered around the plight of some fairies in the Australian rainforest, complete with an accidentally miniaturized lumberjack, an oozing pollution demon voiced by Tim Curry called Hexxus and a manic bat (Robin Williams giving it his all) called Batty Koda. It was the first feature film from onetime Disney Studios animator and Tron artist Bill Kroyer and featured a soundtrack with the Elton John track Some Other World and Williams performing the unforgettable Batty Rap.
In 2018 IGN’s reviewer gave the re-release of FernGully: The Last Rainforest (Family Fun Edition) a lukewarm 6. “A slightly less enchanting tale that may be better served as a nostalgia trip than modern-day fairy tale,” said David McCutcheon. “Where the film succeeds in being charming, it comes off as boring and tedious in others. The overbearing moral story of saving the rainforest is mere politics being shoved between colorful moving frames. Pack in some cliché musical numbers that range from traditional to the aforementioned hippity-hoppity scat, and you’ve got an animated feature that really tastes sour once you’ve aged a bit.”
Despite underperforming at the box office in 1992, the movie did well enough to get a sequel in 1998 with FernGully 2: The Magical Rescue, though it’s worth noting none of the original cast returned; it was direct-to-video, without a single Elton John bop on the soundtrack.
Rachel Weber is the Head of Editorial Development at IGN and an elder millennial. She’s been a professional nerd since 2006 when she got her start on Official PlayStation Magazine in the UK, and has since worked for GamesIndustry.Biz, Rolling Stone and GamesRadar. She loves horror, horror movies, horror games, Red Dead Redemption 2, and her Love and Deepspace boyfriends.
